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Adventure Classic Gaming is running an interview with Chris Tolworthy, an indie game designer who is working on a project to make video games out of various literary classics. His decision to develop these kinds of games was sparked by a desire to reach out to gamers who want more "serious" subject matter, as well as finding an audience among people you would find in a book store, rather than a game store. Tolworthy has already released one game, an adaptation of Les Misérables, and has almost finished Dante's Divine Comedy. After that is done, he'll move on to other works, including Theogeny, by Hesiod, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, aiming for two or three releases a year. He said, "I try to keep as close as possible to the original text. When I create a game I simply go through the book and adapt it chapter by chapter. As far as possible all my puzzles are based on ideas in the original book. So my Dante's Inferno is a lot closer to the book than EA Games' Dante's Inferno that changes Dante into a warrior with a giant scythe! Although I stick closely to the story, I would find it boring to only give the straight text, so my games always give a different twist. For example, I show Les Miserables from the point of view of a minor character who dies early on. In my Divine Comedy I show other points of view as well as Dante's, and they don't see things the same way. Really, what I'm doing is what theater directors do when they put a Shakespeare play into a modern setting. It's the exact same story, but presented in a new way."

Kinda ruins the game, already knowing the ending and major plot-devices, doesn't it?

Anyway, it'd be great to see games dominate the popular iconographic imagery of literary classics in the same way that films have. Will Frankenstein be perceived as a beautiful artifice once again, I wonder...?

"No, but I've seen the movie" becomes "No but I've played the game" when "Read a book" becomes "Watch a movie". Strange times we live in.

If you really want to appreciate some literary work, try translating it into another language while giving back the full literal meaning, the full meaning in context, and preserving the author's style. You'll know it's a good book if you give up on page one, or after the second line in a poem.

That's something no movie or video game could ever give back. Examples: The Count of Monte Christo, The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, and pretty much everything Endre Ady ever wrote.

Kinda ruins the game, already knowing the ending and major plot-devices, doesn't it?

Anyway, it'd be great to see games dominate the popular iconographic imagery of literary classics in the same way that films have. Will Frankenstein be perceived as a beautiful artifice once again, I wonder...?

Why would it ruin the game? Were the LOTR films ruined by the previous publication of the book? And many other examples. If the game is made well and interesting, knowing hte story won't ruin it, knowing the story will make you more immersed and will let you experience the story in a whole new perspective.

I think it's brilliant, just imagine what fun it'd be to experience the chilling effect of The Pit And The Pendulum in something as immersive as a game, or, I dunno, fighting lobstrosities on a forgotten beach yourself instead of just reading about it.

This. I really don't understand the (fairly recent, I think) pop culture obsessive fear of "spoilers", as if knowing the plot beforehand utterly invalidates the experience of seeing the film or reading the book or whatever. Only cheap mystery stories and Dan Brown-style trash work that way. Most everything else, anything with lasting value, is enjoyable regardless of prior knowledge.

It's because many films released nowadays have no substance besides the plot and big explosions. Once you know the plot and seen the explosions there's no reason to watch it again. No moral lessons to mull over, no questions left unanswered, no bits you might have missed that require a second watch, no scenes that rocked you to the core that you just *have* to see again.

Movies with twist would normally require more than one viewing just to 'get' everything - revealing the twist would ruin the film if all the film was relied on the twist. You'll get one viewing out of it (if that) and it'll basically be your second viewing, having missed out on that Raw viewing you have when you don't know what's going to happen. The fun of guessing to yourself through your first viewing. Even KNOWING there's a twist at the end may spoil a truely Raw viewing. I remember watching the Usual Suspects for the first time, years after it came out on DVD, expecting a crime thriller like The Untouchables, but got something truley exceptional - which is why it's one of my favourite films, and one I can watch again and again. Once you have watched that film, and got the twist, even after the second viewing, when you're watching it for the third time, it's still an excellent Crime Thriller.

Or take a film like Watchmen, something that's so layered with plot that you might come out of the cinema underwhelmed and confused. But underneath it is some hard truths about our own society, more than enough morality moments, every plot thread within it having it's own twist revealed was something brilliant.Even if people say 'it wasnt as good as the comic' - it was still excellent for a movie.

A film that's enjoyable with prior knowledge is a rare and fantastic thing. Films like that are also usually more enjoyable that first time round, when everything is a surprise.

Agreed -- I would just like to expound on you argument here and state that a properly executed plot twist (Memento, Usual Suspects, etc.) will often encourage repeat viewings, especially when you were blindsided by it the first time, to see what sort of clues are left to the viewer as to the eventual twist. I know the Usual Suspects in particular demands many repeat viewings to pick up on all the subtleties.

I agree in principle that any book/movie/play whatever is worth experiencing again, and therefore is not ruined by knowing the ending, though I think most people prefer their first experience of the ending to be firsthand.
However, I disagree with the case of Usual Suspects. The ending basically undoes the entire movie. What you just watched was completely made up by Spacey's character. A slightly more sophisticated version of "and then I woke up." At the end, if the interrogating officer is left looking

"At the end, if the interrogating officer is left looking like a fool for falling for it, what does that make the audience?"

Strange, this is not the impression I walked away with at all... I was impressed by the Spacey character's ingenuity in fooling his captors, I never felt that his captors were fools for believing him. And I think that knowing the ending makes it more enjoyable to watch the film again through the lens of knowing the ending. It does not seem that there were that many clues left as to

A film that's enjoyable with prior knowledge is a rare and fantastic thing. Films like that are also usually more enjoyable that first time round, when everything is a surprise.

Yet even those films which are enjoyable on repeat viewings have an additional joy the first time you watch them. No matter how good a movie is on repeat viewings, I still want to be surprised the first time.

It was so bad I couldn't take it. I just finished it because "supposedly" it was so good, according to sites like/. and Digg. I'm so glad I rented it, because I refused to give them any money due to the just ridiculous amount of spam adverts thinly disguised as stories on./ and Digg.

1) Rorsach or whatever the hell his name is was so cheesy. His voiceover stuff in the beginning sounded so cheesy and lame I couldn't beli

1) The idea with Rorschach is that his moral core has become so messed up from all of his experiences that he is almost a tragic character. His journal is supposed to be the ravings of a shattered psyche; those who compare it to Heath Ledger's Joker are really missing the point. On a side-note, it is interesting that you brought him up as your first point, because Watchmen as a whole (whether the movie or the comic book mini-series on which it is based) is a Rorschach t

Sorry but that depends on people. I've been a book lover since the age of six, but if you tell me the end of a book before i finish it, you almost kill the book for me. It will be hard for me to finish reading the book.
What i like in the book is to see things unravel one by one in a process that leads you from a starting situation till the unknown final situation. I like to ask myself "hmm this will probably ends like this", "will that character survives ? I'm not sure", or "can the character get out of t

No, the AC you replied to is correct. You read stories for suspense, which really is an invention of mass consumerism. In contrast, all Shakespeare's plays, and all the great Greek tragedies, were based on stories and plots that were already well circulated, and known to the audience.

Not every work of classic literature has to have *all* the major plot twists known. Hell, I bet the core gamer target for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [wikipedia.org] hasn't even read Pride and Prejudice!

Kinda ruins the game, already knowing the ending and major plot-devices, doesn't it?

Not necessarily. When Titanic came into theaters ten years ago, everyone knew the ship would sink, but it still drew in the crowds. It's not always how the story ends, but the path it takes to get there.

Or even 1984! Have Stanley run around finding his ever elusive razor blades. The best part is you can have a legitimate hot coffee moment in the woods followed by a "shot the hidden microphone" mini game.

Now apart from the obvious point of "errr so we know where this is going" which just means its a directed rather than open-ended game this is really just like using the standard film adaptation approach and applying it to games.

Its not that it is really new, Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did something similar many moons ago. Playing on throw away lines to drive the puzzles (tea and no tea) in some cases but generally following the plot of the book.

And I have great expectations for uh, Great Expectations - The Drudgery, what I expect (greatly) to be the first of 12 thrilling episodes.

Then there's the witch-hunting fun of The Crucible, a MMORPG naturally.

I'd also be looking for "Death of a Salesman - The Good Years" where your task is to sell stuff door-to-door: 1 point per comb, 5pts for a vacuum cleaner. I see this particular franchise working well as an expansion pack for the Sims, or as a 2D scroller.

Back in the days of adventure games, there was a bit of focus on the older gamers as well as the younger players. So you could have games with a lot of material that WOULD appeal to the crowd Chris Tolworthy is targeting. The problem is that in those days, you didn't see enough marketing to try to draw in that sort of customer.

Take a look at Gabriel Knight 3, which came out well before Da vinci Code even was written(1999 for GK3, 2003 for Da Vinci Code). Yes, the 3D engine wasn't very good, and there were things that could have been done better, but the writing was very good, the puzzles were pretty solid, and if it were to get a face lift(using a new 3D engine), it would appeal to those who prefer books to most games.

After the death of Sierra and Interplay, there has been a shortage of publishers willing to back games targeted at an older audience. It seems like the focus is the teen market, and if you are older than 25 years old and prefer something other than a first person shooter, your choices are more and more limited.

If every movie were rated PG, with the content of a PG movie, it wouldn't be long before the majority of adults would just stop watching movies. People grow up, and want things that THEY find entertaining. If the movie industry can have a wide variety of movie types, from the really bad formula action adventure movies, to the highly artistic types, to romance, comedy, and drama, then why has the computer and console game industries focused primarily on first person shooters that only appeal to one type of game player?

I'm not sure the games industry is quite so different to the movie industry; you've got your Massive Summer Blockbuster (Transformers 2) raking in vast piles of cash, and then a widely acclaimed, really interesting sounding film like Moon that I haven't managed to get to see yet because it's being shown on less than 60 screens in the whole of the UK. By the same token, there are lots of interesting games; off the top of my head fun little indie puzzles (World of Goo), games that play with the form (The Pat

Many years ago (1995 apparently) there was a game called The Dark Eye [wikipedia.org] that was based on the writings of Poe. It was a pretty simple clicky puzzle/adventure type game, but the way it incorporated the various stories was pretty well done. It also helped that it had the voice of William S Burroughs as the main character. Interesting little game, and one way that literature can be used as the basis for a game.

Yeah - I was going to mention that one. Strange, though - I could swear it had the voice of an A-list or former A-list actress in it, as well, but I couldn't find that on IMDB (I did remember it had Burroughs). Knowing the stories made the game very easy - not sure if it woulda been quite as easy if I hadn't been into Poe at the time. One of the oddities in that one is you play murderer and victim in The Telltale Heart, so you basically do that story twice as different characters.

Adapting stories from other media for videogames isn't a new idea. It's just that films have been the usual source, perhaps because they're culturally/commercially closer, especially if you compare the AAA game title to the blockbuster Hollywood film. Films also come with a built-in visual style to adapt, which helps with the recognition. The practice has become prominent enough that the only major general study of adaptation [amazon.com] between mediums that I know of actually spends a decent amount of time discussing

Methinks the biggest problem with translating a book to a game is: with a book, the main characters usually make some grand mistakes (very specific ones) and then spend the rest of the tale trying to recover, while with a game the emphasis is NOT making mistakes - any mistakes. Readers want to see characters fail and overcome; players ARE the characters, and don't want the hit on their ego. We're fascinated by characters in books, but rarely would want to _be_ that character.

Readers want to see characters fail and overcome; players ARE the characters, and don't want the hit on their ego. We're fascinated by characters in books, but rarely would want to _be_ that character.

You've got it exactly... but some games do a pretty good job with it, though... they can, for example, play a couple of prologue/training levels and then take over in cutscene, depicting the fall, and then you give control back to the player so they can pick themselves up again. The real problem with adapting books to games is that books follow a linear story, where gamers these days expect a go-anywhere-do-anything environment. They expect to be given the choices, where they're made for you in a book.

Perhaps the answer is to take the setting/universe of a book, and set a game there? That might work for MMO-type stories. The alternative is to tell a story/adventure based on a minor side character in a major literary work... the action is an aside from the main storyline depicted in the work it's based on. The story revolves around the one we all know, and events in the one we all know are referenced, but the main storyline in the game itself is different. In a sense, we get told two different stories at the same time... I'm thinking of the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as a perfect example of the kind of meta-story I'm talking about.

They could also set the game in either the epilogue or the prologue surrounding the events described in the book we all know. American McGee's Alice is a perfect example of that kind of storytelling.

The plot can be summarised thus: Hero goes for a trip through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, all of which are stuffed with Florentines or other Italians. There is a lot of talking, mostly about politics or philosophy. Nothing actually happens. The moment anything looks like being problematic, an angelic messenger arrives and sorts it out without intervention of the hero.

I mean, I am genuinely puzzled. I know the Commedia fairly well, and I've read most of it in the original. And I simply cannot imagine how you turn it into a game.

I was wondering the same thing. Certainly, for the "big budget" EA adaptation of the Inferno, I think that we're just going to get a God of War clone which lifts the names of its levels from Inferno.

I suspect you may be familiar with it already, but others reading this thread might not be, so I'm going to give a quick plug here to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's 1976 adaptation of Inferno. It distorts or subverts some of the key theological conceits of the original, but it's a fun and thought provoking read (which populates Hell with a more up-to-date cast). There's a more recent 2009 sequel to it, which, despite being rather luridly titled "Escape from Hell" is also pretty good. The amusing thing is that both books contain sections which will challenge/offend (depending on sensitivity) Christians and atheists alike.

Like I say, they're not perfect, but they're still a damned sight more faithful to the spirit of the Divine Comedy than what will inevitably turn out to be some action game where you press X, Circle, X, Square, X, Triangle in sequence during a quick-time event to make Dante decapitate the big Demon and springboard off the body onto a motorbike.

Honestly, they butchered it. The only things the game and the poem have in common is they both take place in Hell, and they both have a guy named Dante. The game looks more like "God of War: Kratos Goes to Hell." They used some of the descriptions of Hell from the poem for concept, but I'm fairly certain I don't remember the part where Dante tears a bloody path through Hell with a giant scythe killing everything to save his love.

The plot can be summarised thus: Hero goes for a trip through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, all of which are stuffed with Florentines or other Italians. There is a lot of talking, mostly about politics or philosophy. Nothing actually happens.

It'd probably be a WarioWare clone set in hell, with each three-second scene involving surviving a form of torture, and the talking happens in cut scenes.

All of these great literary works were never intended to be interactive... as in "something that changes the outcome of the story based entirely on the audience itself".

These writers didn't leave much in the way of "what if..." contingencies involving their characters and plots. If they had, there never would've been a market for all those "choose your own adventure" books they used to hock on us during school book drives when we were still growing up.

That said, wouldn't a series of adult-themed "choose your own adventure" style books be kind of interesting? But, instead of simple "turn to page x" instructions, you'd have to solve various puzzles to know where to go next. Oh, and maybe a mechanism to slice off fingers for wimps who can't commit to their choices...

There *is* another approach to creating video games based off classic texts. It might make some people wish to gouge out their eyes, but you have things like "American McGee's Alice", or Square's "Kingdom Hearts I & II" (which were based off Disney franchises, which were in turn mostly based off of books by dead authors).

Basically, you use the setting, the characters, etc, but you create new stories, new adventures. That seems easier to do with more 'fantastic' fiction than something like Pride and Prej

[ In the Barn ; 34 points ]The air in the main barn is stuffy, almost claustrophobic,despite the large size. Beams of late-afternoon sunlightangle down, with flecks of hay and dust suspended in thestagnant air. A barn door leads out.There is a broken puppy here.There is a broken Candy here.

> out

[ Curley's Ranch ; 34 points ]

> go through gate

[ Entrance to Curley's Ranch ; 35 points ]

> go down path

[ By the Pond ; 36 points ]You see a crying Lenny here.

> ask about the rabbits

Lenny sits down and tries to explain about the rabbit farmof his dreams again, calming him somewhat.

Ultimately I hope you'll all forgive my skepticism. The classics are required reading in most high schools for a reason - there is some degree of cultural significance to the works. Still, written classics have the problem of being written stories designed to be passively consumed by the viewer, while video games require a world in which the audience participates. Linear stories don't work extremely well for this. If what I do doesn't "matter", why would I bother doing it? I remember playing "Deadly Tide" a few years back, and it sucked because it was basically a rail shooter. There was no real point to it except to get through the game without dying and take down as many enemies as possible in the process. I was bored with it in about half an hour. Conversely, take Mass Effect, a game where choices you make throughout the game will always have some sort of affect on what happens. I played through that game twice, and am working on a third.

If one were to make a video grame out of "Pride and Prejudice" for example, it would take some serious ingenuity to figure out a way of designing it such that the game stays true to the book and gives the player something to do besides just running around and talking to everyone (which essentially makes it an interactive movie, and very minimally so at that), has the player participating in the story whereby they have some sort of effect on the outcome, yet can stay true to the book. If it stays too true to the book then everything is predetermined and it doesn't make for much of a game, and if it doesn't then there is little point in tying it to a piece of classic literature.

If one were to make a video grame out of "Pride and Prejudice" for example, it would take some serious ingenuity to figure out a way of designing it such that the game stays true to the book and gives the player something to do besides just running around and talking to everyone (which essentially makes it an interactive movie, and very minimally so at that), has the player participating in the story whereby they have some sort of effect on the outcome, yet can stay true to the book. If it stays too true to the book then everything is predetermined and it doesn't make for much of a game, and if it doesn't then there is little point in tying it to a piece of classic literature.

Although remaking 'classics' into a video game sounds like a great idea, the inherit problems already mentioned don't use the medium of video games to their full potential.

What I would like to see in a video game is the depth that is in the 'classics', using the medium of video games to its full potential. I think of "Watchmen" when I think of this. No one really took comic books seriously until Alan Moore created, quite well, a real 'classic' using the medium of comic books. It was in Time's top 10

As far as possible all my puzzles are based on ideas in the original book. So my Dante's Inferno is a lot closer to the book than EA Games' Dante's Inferno that changes Dante into a warrior with a giant scythe!

I thought that the title "Divine Comedy" was indicative the fact that the real Dante painted with the blood of the dead. So what EA did was appropriate, no?

I'm ready to adapt Thornton Wilder's Our Town [wikipedia.org]. It will be painstakingly true to the original play I struggled to pay attention to in high school. The game will deliver each slow, achingly dull line of dialog with Freddy Krueger flashing on the screen at random 10-20 minute intervals, requiring a quick key-press to prove you're awake. You fall asleep, you die.

Did anyone play Rivers of Light in the the Adventure Construction Set? [wikipedia.org] Stuart Smith [wikipedia.org] based it in Gilgamesh. It's been so long since I played it, I hardly remember what the game was like, but I do remember being thoroughly entranced by it, and countless hours spent in the ACS game editor.